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Original Letters from India (New York Review Books Classics)

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The basis for Forester's "Passage to India," this late eighteenth century collection of letters shows an India in the ever-tightening grip of colonization and the naively racist mindset behind colonization in general.

The letter's author, Eliza Fay, is a young, newly wed, upper-middle class Englishwoman making and admittedly harrowing passage to India with her husband. The trip begins with a journey through France, then at war with England, followed by a passage through the Egyptian desert and, upon arrival on the Sub-continent, imprisonment by Hyder Ali, "Muslim ruler of Mysore and military commander who played an important part in the wars in southern India in the mid-18th century" (Hyder Ali. Encyclopędia Britannica. Retrieved May 6, 2004, from Encyclopędia Britannica Premium Service. <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=42637>).

Her letters show clearly the eighteenth century English notion of "bringing culture to the savages." Eliza wonders in genuine incomprehension at the thieving servants, failing even to acknowledge the fact that she and her fellow countrymen are occupiers and in place to except kindness from their subjects. She is shocked at Ali's gall to "treat _English_ subjects with such cruelty" (120, emphasis hers). Ironically, describing her maltreatment by an upper-class Englishwoman in India, she provides the perfect summary of her blindness: "Those basking in the lap of prosperity can little appreciate the sufferings or make allowance for the errors of the unfortunate; whom they regard as almost beings of another order" (175).

Yet we can hardly fault Eliza for simply reflecting the middle-class values of her society, and in fact there is much in this young lady to set her apart from her peers. She endures some genuine hardships with a cliché English "stiff upper lip," and has the strength to deal with a less-than-ideal husband in a manner less than conventional in the eighteenth century.

Overall, it's not a book I'd recommend for "light," easy reading. However, if you've read Forester's "Passage to India" or you want a look back at the beginnings of English colonization, then it's not a bad read.